Charles Ives - Sonata No. 1, 1st Movement

Ofra Yitzhaki - Piano
Live recording from a faculty recital at the Clairmont Hall, Tel Aviv University, March 2024
Recording by Rafi Eshel
Charles Ives was a free composer. Even though he studied music at Yale, he made his living in the insurance business. That perhaps enabled the absolute freedom in composition, which fitted his personality and spirit as a transcendentalist.
Ives was born in Danbury, a small village in New England, in an area known for its transcendentalist philosophers (Emerson and Thoreau, among others). Like those philosophers, he was convinced that the individual might reach all high virtues - morality, comprehension, connection to the divine - only through contemplating oneself and one's immediate environment. He believed in complete individuality, freedom of thought, and independence - as opposed to books, tradition, and religions - as a source of inspiration.
Ives knew the European musical tradition and sometimes even referred to it in his music, but his main concern was to compose music that reflected his nearest environment. His wish was that while listening to his music, we feel as if we are in the city square of a small town, hearing "an occasional marching band, hymns from a nearby church, an untuned piano, simple theatre tunes, ragtime melodies from a nightclub, shouts, and whistles". In this sense, this sonata is an epic work, a portrait depicting America in the early 20th century - a tale of freedom and communal spirit.
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